Jessica Biel is back on the small screen and people are loving her!

Cape Town – We first got to know Jessica Biel as Mary Camden in 7th Heaven on the small screen.

Now she's back in a new role that's causing a stir.

In the limited series The Sinner, Biel plays Cora Tannetti a young mother at the centre of a murder after killing someone in public.

Watch the trailer here:

What the critics say

The series has a 94% rating on Rotten.Tomatoes with critics calling the 'whydunit' suspenseful and filled with power performances.

Brian Tallerico from RogerEbert.com says: "If I had all eight episodes of The Sinner, I would have watched them consecutively. It is the television version of a page-turner, as you inch forward in your seat, waiting to see where it goes next."

indieWire's Ben Travers notes: "There’s just enough intrigue in the set-up — and in Biel’s moving central performance — to justify finding out why this regular person did something so irregular."

Matt Zoller Seitz from New York Magazine/Vulture notes: "USA Network, Simonds, and Campos deserve credit for refusing to duplicate the usual template for this kind of show."

Daniel D'Addario from TIME Magazine says: "It all adds up to a drama that's strikingly filmed, gratifyingly smarter than it needs to be and — better still in an era of bloated episode counts — snappily paced."

The Sinner premieres on M-Net (DStv 101) on Tuesday, 19 September at 21:00.